The Company of Fifty carried the Midwife’s Herball out to meet the winds of the North Sea. De Langste Dag. Saturday 29, June 2024, Western Breakwater, Ostend, Belgium. Bitter Walk Wind Sing is a part of Wendy Morris’s Recuperating a Herball for an enslaved Angolan Midwife at the Cape (2018- ) Photos by Wannes Cré. De Langste Dag / Mu.Zee and KAAP Kunstencentrum
The Procession is a part of Nothing of Importance Occurred, a project of recuperation of a Herball for a 17th century Angolan midwife at the Cape, South Africa. This project explores the knowledge that midwives and women of the 17th century had of plants that controlled fertility. At the heart of the story is the person on Maaij Claesje, an enslaved woman in the VOC (Dutch East India Company) slave lodge, Cape Town, who was, eventually, able to negotiate her emancipation … Read More
In residence at Middelheim Museum, Wendy Morris is exploring how knowledge of plant-based contraception has been passed down clandestinely for centuries. Curator Pieter Boons spoke with the artist about the many themes in her work: about our lost relationship with plants, about contraception, loss of language and personal connections to histories of enslavement. P: But you don’t work alone. You are working in or as a Company. Who is the Company? First of all the name of the ‘Company’ refers … Read More
Since January Wendy has been working in commission of the Middelheim Museum on a new performance work in which the virtues of medicinal plants growing in the park – and more specifically indigenous contraceptive plants – are central. On June 24 this work, which is a procession and an ambulatory library, will wind its way through the park – and it needs you to join in! With this mail we are making a call to friends, acquaintances and anyone interested, to become … Read More
Middelheim Museum / Reading the Landscape